Lamictal, Day Four: 3000 words today (actual narrative/dialogue, rather than narrative sketchy), which is both good and surprising, because I was half expecting a decrease in productivity. I know that when I first went on Zoloft back in the spring of 1998, I spent the rest of the year feeling sort of pleasantly blasé. There was a point when I wondered if I'd ever write again--or if it would even bother me if I didn't. For someone who dreamed of being a writer ever since she was old enough to hold a crayon and have picture books read to her--who had first been published at the age of eight*--this was a fairly disturbing development. But as I got used to the medication, I started writing again and the sensation that I had a hand pressing down on me--in a mellow, easygoing way--faded. Since then, I've come to expect a certain period of side effects when starting a new medication. Of course, I'm still only on 25 mg of Lamictal, so it's kind of negligible at this point, I suppose.

This does mark the second day in a row that I've had a fairly bad headache, though.


* This gets an asterisk because I wrote up a strange little dream I had one night, and my teacher liked the "story" so much that she sent it to a student-teacher magazine called The Imaginary Club, where they accepted it... and proceeded to rewrite it entirely. The most egregious change, for example, was that when my protagonists finally managed to hail a cab with their cohort of talking animals (it involved an around-the-world-in-a-year bet between the animals and their owner. What? Stop looking at me like that), the editors changed the story so that the cab driver was shocked and surprised and astonished, etc. I was very indignant, because in the nonsensical dream world of this story, everyone recognized these talking animals, as if they were celebrities, and the cabdriver wouldn't have been shocked at all. As an adult, I mean, yes, I understand that there's no way the editors could have read my mind, and that if I didn't express this in the story, it wasn't their fault for thinking something entirely different would have happened. I fault them for changing it at all--I mean, why they would bother to publish young children in the first place, if they were so het up about logical consistency, I don't know. Anyway, they sort of rewrote the whole thing like that, and I didn't know until the teacher handed me the magazine one day, and she wanted me to read it aloud but there wasn't time and thank God for that, because after I read it on the way home from school, I spent the rest of the day sobbing uncontrollably because it wasn't my story.

Linky-link:

Two pictures of Suri Cruise from the upcoming issue of Vanity Fair. I'm tempted to format a poll as to whether that's a toupee, a hat, or a dead muppet on the kid's head.

ETA: The cover, in which Suri is a dead ringer for Roy Orbison.

We're through the looking glass with the Harlan Ellison thing now: I think, if I'm understanding this correctly, he's saying didn't do anything anyway, shouldn't have apologized in the first place, and in fact was getting back at Connie Willis for roasting him, which... those are two mutually exclusive explanations there, Mr. Ellison. Also, we seem to be immense stupidheads for discussing this at all. Apparently.

Another writer's take on the situation--interestingly, she maintains that it's not about Sexism, Capital S, in the Science-Fiction Culture; it's about one man who does things he knows he can get away with, and the people who indulge that.

More on The Bridge, including a discussion of how the filmmakers lied about what they intended to film (although Eric Steel does have a good point about not wanting people to know that cameras would be on the bridge to provide instant immortality).

Something I wanted to say about suicide, regarding survivor's guilt.

Awww: The Discovery Channel sets up the Crikey Fund.

Paris Hilton refused entry to club, weeps in arms of friend outside. With pictures, which is the fun part. Insert obligatory "Why can't a stingray get her?" comment here.

Tags: asshaberdashery, deaths, depression, medication, schadenfreude, writing
Current Music: The Illusionist, "Sophie"